


Power, Self, and Ceremony

by ParadifeLoft



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Background Relationships, Character Study, F/F, Gen, Sith Empire, Trans Female Character, author is a Talos Drellik-level Sith history/philosophy nerd and it SHOWS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-18
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-05-02 05:52:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5236739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lana doesn't like titles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power, Self, and Ceremony

**Author's Note:**

> I think I have a thing about people doing gender via Sith philosophy and practise and vice-versa. I think I also have a thing for Way Too Much Implicature.
> 
> The main reason I've never written trans fic before is that I find it hard to turn my headcanons there into story arcs I find personally interesting up to my own standards as an author. So this was... interesting and challenging, and hopefully will be rewarding for readers!
> 
> And finally, a terminology note, because I'm probably more in love with jargon than a lot of people: " _jen'ari_ " is a Sith word meaning "Dark Lord"; it was the term used to refer to the leader of the dark Jedi who arrived on Korriban and came to rule over the sith species, creating what ultimately became the Sith Empire. In my (head)canon, by the time period of SWTOR, it's a more general-use word referring to _all_ of said dark Jedi, who are revered akin to national heroes/founders.

Lana remembers, when she was little, attending a party with her family in honor of one of her mother’s cousins being granted the Darth title. She remembers standing in her best dress suit, watching lots of adults in ornate robes and fresh-pressed Imperial uniforms. They all seem to greet one another with comments on her relative, whom she barely knows and would probably not be able to pick out of a crowd, but who is nonetheless a semi-frequent household name when her parents are speaking with colleagues – for of course, he is Sith.

She asks her mother later, when she gets a moment free to check on how Lana is doing, why they’re all talking about her cousin but calling him by a different name. _It’s a great honour for a Sith Lord to be considered worthy to be a Darth,_ her mother explains. _Oftentimes they see it as a symbolic moment, for having broken free of what limited them in the previous stages of their life. They take a new name to express who they’ve now become._

Lana wonders who it is that picks out a Sith’s new name, and spends the rest of the party observing the figures in robes much more closely.

\-- --

“One of the primary conflicts between the _jen’ari_ and the Jedi they rebelled against was over whether the Force should be used in the study of living things, and whether that study should involve practical manipulation to see _how_ the Force can influence life, and to what extents this could be taken.”

The prospective acolytes’ tutor changes to the next slide in the holographic display, a set of 3D models of example Shamblers and Leviathans. It’s not this part of the history that Lana finds particularly appealing – Sorzus Syn’s monsters had always struck her more as grotesquery than art – but what comes later: the application of the Exiles’ alchemy to merge their own bloodlines with those of the purebloods. Lana has little sith ancestry in her own family, to be sure, but there is nonetheless something enchanting about using one’s knowledge in the Force to make a person greater and more fully an expression of themselves than they would otherwise be unaided. _The Force shall free me, indeed._

“The _jen’ari_ ’s Jedi contemporaries believed that preexisting nature should limit, rather than inspire, the Force and the Force-user,” her tutor continues, and Lana feels a burst of satisfaction that she should be born to the Sith rather than the Republic. She bends her head down and tucks a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, and jots down another line of notes.

\-- --

Her new master pulls up the Imperial Registry on the day she passes her Trials, enters in all the information to her file that makes her now, officially, a member of the Sith Order.

Before he finishes updating it, she asks if she can add something – has the console handed over to her – finally, sends all of the changes in.

Lana Beniko, Sith. It is utterly correct.

\-- --

It does not take that long for Lana to realise that many of her fellows' perspectives on what the Jedi believe and prefer to study are not entirely accurate; that rather than simply shying away from knowledge that involves putting their own desires above the natural state of the world, they construct elaborate systems of doctrine and philosophy that legitimise some, prohibit many. And it is not the first time, when she speaks of this with others, that another Sith has questioned Lana's devotion to the Empire, citing her interest in learning of and from all views of the Force as seditious, untrue to the principles of their Order and indicative of weakness and lack of ambition. Neither are true, and she tells them this, explaining that ambition is not synonymous with adherence to dogma; proposing that the nature of the Sith as she understands it, is questioning what those around you proclaim as inviolable boundaries, seeking power and mastery from all sources, not merely the traditionally acceptable ones.

She is nothing if not Sith, even if some are less than inclined to see it; her ambition is not simply interpersonal status but further understanding, born perhaps of a certain gratitude for what the chance to be Sith has bought her. Where Jedi wish for the Force to be with you, among the Sith, the wish is that it serve you well. And Lana cannot say whether the Force's mere presence in her life has resulted in the successes she's won in her life so far - but where she has chosen to use it, make it servant to her will - it has performed for her admirably.

\-- --

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want to be made a Lord?” Nox asks her one night, chin propped up on the back of one hand, eyes glowing gold and scheming. She traces the line of Lana’s hip, idly, with her free hand. “I could do it, easy. I’m a member of the Council, after all. And I’m tired of hearing your name slandered.”

Lana looks down at this – barely more than a girl in some ways, for all the power she wields; still so convinced of the simplicity of that power, and the simplicity of knowing what was right and good in the world.

“No, I’m sure,” she replies. “Though you are kind to offer.” She looks away for a moment, growing contemplative, how best she might explain this preference of hers that is so odd among Sith. “Perhaps look at it this way: being a Lord, in the eyes of others, would obscure rather than reveal those things about me, and about being Sith, that I hold most dear.”

She can tell Nox doesn’t quite understand; what Lana speaks of is, in multiple ways, outside her range of experience. But Nox is content enough to let it be, to save her often insistent questioning, perhaps, for some other time.

Lana is satisfied, and grateful.


End file.
